"Why, it's as plain as cook that you are, now," tittered Geraldine. 

 "Hold your noise and leave the gal be," said Mrs. Pill, offended by the allusion to her looks, "if she's in love she ain't married, and no more she ought to be; if she'd had a husband like mine, who drank every day in the week and lived on my earnings. He's dead now, an' I gave 'im a 'andsome tombstone with the text: 'Go thou and do likewise' on it, being a short remark, lead letterin' being expensive. Ah well, as I allays say, 'Flesh is grass with us all.'" 

 While the cook maundered on Thomas sat with his dull eyes fixed on the flushed face of Susan.  "What about the poisoning?" he demanded. 

 "It was this way," said Susan.  "Father was working at some house in these parts—" 

 "What! Down here?" 

 "Yes, at Rexton, which was then just rising into notice as a place for gentlefolks. He had just finished with a house when he came home one day with his wages. He was taken ill and died. The doctor said he had taken poison, and he died of it. Arsenic it was," explained Susan to her horrified audience. 

 "But why did he poison himself?" asked Geraldine. 

 "I don't know: no one knew. He was gettin' good wages, and said he would make us all rich." 

 "Ah," chimed in Thomas suddenly, "in what way, Susan?" 

 "He had a scheme to make our fortunes. What it was, I don't know. But he said he would soon be worth plenty of money. Mother thought someone must have poisoned him, but she could not find out. As we had a lot of trouble then, it was thought father had killed himself to escape it, but I know better. If he had lived, we should have been rich. He was on an extra job down here," she ended. 

 "What was the extra job?" asked Thomas curiously. 

 Susan shook her head.  "Mother never found out. She went to the house he worked on, which is near the station. They said father always went away for three hours every afternoon by an arrangement with the foreman. Where he went, no one knew. He came straight from this extra job home and died of poison. Mother thought," added Susan, looking round cautiously, "that someone must have had a wish to get rid of father, he knowing too much." 

 "Too much of what, my gal?" asked Mrs. 

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